MOSCOW: The victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential elections has opened new opportunities to reset ties between Moscow and Washington, said the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund on Wednesday.
Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2022 sparked the biggest conflict between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the Soviet Union and the US came close to a nuclear war.
Diplomats from both Russia and the US say ties between the two largest nuclear powers of the world have been deteriorating in the aftermath of World War II.
Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund said that Trump had won the presidency “despite a large-scale disinformation campaign directed against them”.
“Their convincing victory shows that ordinary Americans are tired of the unprecedented lies, incompetence, and malice of the Biden administration,” said Dmitriev, who has had contacts with Trump’s team.
“This opens up new opportunities for resetting relations between Russia and the United States,” added Dmitriev.
Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States on Wednesday, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency, AP news agency reported.
Trump, 78, has promised to end the war in Ukraine if elected, however, he did not provide any plan in this regard. Putin has also expressed his readiness to talk about a possible end to the war.
Putin has also spoken of the need for Moscow to be given security guarantees.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday said that Trump’s victory would probably be bad news for Ukraine.
“Trump has one useful quality for us: as a businessman to the core, he mortally dislikes spending money on various hangers-on and stupid hanger-on allies, on bad charity projects and on voracious international organisations,” Medvedev stated on his official Telegram account.
He said Trump would likely not want to spend too much money on the war in Ukraine.
